Best Harry Potter CCG site:
www.pojo.com

   
I also created separate websites for information about the Young Jedi and the Simpsons trading card games:

Young Jedi CCG Megasite
The Simpsons TCG Megasite

Wizards of the Coast puts out quite a few collectible card games. I've tried their Pokemon, Xena, Magic: The Gathering, Major League Showdown, and Harry Potter. I've even played some CCGs from other companies: On The Edge and Legend of Five Rings. The one I prefer is Harry Potter.

The rules are simple. Each player makes a deck of 60 cards. Each turn a player draws a card, damages his opponent with any Creatures played in previous turns, then takes two Actions. An action can be to play a card or draw a card. However, some cards have rules that modify these rules. For example, playing Fouled! on your opponent causes him to lose one Action on his next turn. The object of the game is to make your opponent runs out of cards in his deck.

There are many types of cards, but they can be divided into Lessons and all other cards. Lesson cards provide one unit of Power each and come in one of five colors. Most cards have a Power and color requirement that the player must meet in order to play the card. For example, it costs 4 Power to play Fouled!, and at least one of those sources of power must be yellow (Quidditch).

Another aspect of CCGs is that they are collectible. They are sold in small packs of random cards. They range in rarity from common to rare (Holographic/Foil). In each pack, you'll get many more common cards than rare cards. In order to collect one of each of the rares, you may have buy dozens of the common cards (I know I did).

What I like most about the Harry Potter CCG is that WOtC separated the players from the collectors. Unlike most other CCGs, the best cards to play with are NOT always the rare ones. In fact, most of the best cards are common (like Fouled! shown above) and uncommon. This means you don't have to buy a fortune in cards to play competitively. Another key point: special promotional cards duplicate the regular edition cards, except maybe with a foil coating. In Pokemon, some of the best cards are promo editions that are almost impossible to get. In Harry Potter, if you want to play, the promo player doesn't have any advantage.

Formats
I created two new formats for playing Harry Potter. The first is the Pocket Saver format. Make a 61-card deck using one Character card, up to 6 uncommon cards, and the rest either commons or Lessons. You can make really good decks this way, and it's cheap to play. If you buy one box of cards you'll have (on average) 396 cards: 72 lessons, 36 rares, 72 uncommons, and 216 commons.

I found that there were still a lot of cards that never get played. They are good cards for their Power level, but they get overshadowed by more costly but more powerful cards. In order to play these cards I created the Four & Under format. Make a deck using one Character card, and any combination of common or uncommon cards that have a power level of 4 or less. Fill out your deck with Lessons, of course. Adventure cards are allowed unless they require more than 4 Lessons to play.

Try them out and let me know if they work for you.

I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather - just one. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother - why, its brother gave you that scar.
--Mr. Ollivander, Makers of Fine Wands